It will be generally admitted that in England this school of thought is practically dead. In his vigorous and persistent attempt to revive it in Canada Mr. Smith has met with little success. That one of the most brilliant writers and masters of style in the English world should in a distant colony have devoted well-nigh twenty years of his life to weakening the political bond between Britain and that colony with practically no visible result, is of itself a phenomenon which indicates the true tendency of national life. But that in the pursuit of his fixed idea Mr. Smith has done much harm is, I think, scarcely open to doubt. Both in Britain and the United States he has produced false impressions on Canadian affairs. The useful efforts which he has made for the elevation of journalism and for the purification of public life in Canada, the greater service which he might have done in giving high ideals to the Young Dominion, have been neutralized or made impossible by his intellectual slavery to a set of ideas which rendered him incapable of entering into or sympathizing with the deeper motives of {165} Canadian life. A great contemporary thinker and satirist, James Russell Lowell, made the 'barbed arrows of his indignant wit' the terror of corrupt politicians, while still retaining the love of the people whom he served. This he did in virtue of his constant sympathy with national aspirations and the firm faith in his country's future which shines through every page of his bitterest criticisms. In a similar sphere of effort Goldwin Smith has failed, because he has permitted an atrabilious and pessimistic temperament, a preference of epigram to accuracy, and an impatience at the non-fulfilment of his own political prophecies to distort his studies of Canadian problems, and to take away much of their value. For those many Canadians who welcomed his coming to Canada, as one of the happiest omens for the political and intellectual life of the country, in whom even yet admiration struggles with disappointment, the duty of pointing out his unfitness to interpret the political history and actual position of Canada, is as painful as it is imperative.